bled the Ottoman pride, lived during the peace without pomp, loving and cultivating letters in a court, where they are little honoured, and setting an example to his masters how they should protect them. M. de Montesquieu thought that he could discover in his conversation some remains of affection for his ancient country. Prince Eugene especially discovered it, as much as an enemy could, when he talked of the fatal consequences of that intestine division which has so long troubled the church of France: the statesman foresaw its duration and effects, and foretold it like a philosopher.

M. de Montesquieu left Vienna to visit Hungary, an opulent and fertile country, inhabited by a haughty and generous nation, the scourge of its tyrants, and the support of its sovereigns. As few persons know this country well, he has written wir care this part of his travels.

From Germany he went to Italy, he saw at Venice the famous Mr. Law, who had nothing remaining of his grandeur, but projects fortunately destined to die away in his ́own head, and a diamond which he pawned to play at games of hazard. One day the conversation turned on the famous system which Law had invented; an epoch of so many calamities and so many great fortunes, and especially of a remarkable corruption in our morals, As the parliainent of Paris, the immediate depository of the laws during a mi nority, had made some resistance to the Scotch minister on this occasion, M. de Montesquieu asked him why he had never tried to overconie this resistance by a method almost always infallible in England, by the grand mover of human actions, in a word, by money. "These are not," answered Law, "Geniuses so ardent and so generous as my countrymen; but they are much

moré incorruptible." We shall add, without any prejudice of national vanity, that a society which is free for some short limited time, ought to resist corruption more, than one which is always so: the first when it sells its liberty loses it; the second, so to speak, only lends it, and exercises it even when it is doing so. Thus the circumstances and nature of government, give rise to the vices and virtues of nations.

Another person no less famous, whom M. de Montesquieu saw still oftener at Venice, was Count de Bonneval. This man, so known by his adventures, which were not yet at an end, and flattered with conversa ing with so good a judge, and one so worthy of hearing them, often related to him the remarkable circumstances of his life, recited the mili tary actions in which he had been engaged, and drew the characters of those generals and ministers whom he had known. M. de Montesquieu often recalled to mind these conver sations, and related different strokes of them to his friends.

He went from Venice to Rome. In this ancient capital of the world, which is still so in some respects, he applied himself chiefly to examine that which distinguishes it most at present; the works of Raphael, of Titian, and of Michael Angelo. He had not made a particular study of the fine arts; but that expression, which shines in the master-pieces of this kind, infallibly strikes every man of genius. Accustomed to study. nature, he knew her again when well imitated, as a like portrait strikes all those who are familiarly acquainted with the original. Those productions of art must indeed be wretched, whose whole beauty is only discernable by artists.

After having travelled over Italy, M. de Mentesquieu came to Switzer land. Ile carefully examined thosɛ

probable manner, the plan of an ancient edifice; supplying, by genius and happy conjectures, what was wanting in these unformed and mutilated ruins.

It is in this point of view that we ought to consider the work of M. de Montesquieu. He finds the causes of the grandeur of the Romans in that love of liberty, of labour, and of their country, which was instilled into them during their infancy; in those intestine divisions, which gave an activity to their genius, and which ceased immediately upon the appearance of an enemy; in that constancy after misfortunes, which never despaired of the republic; in that principle they adhered to of never making peace but after victories; in the honour of a triumph, which was a subject of emulation among the generals; in that protection which they granted to those people who rebelled against their kings; in the excellent policy of permitting the conquered to preserve their religion and customs; and that of never having two enemies upon their hands at once, and of bearing every thing of the one, till they had destroyed the other. He finds the causes of their declension in the aggrandizement of the state itself; in those distant wars, which obliging the citizens to be too long absent, made them insensibly lose their republican spirit; in the privilege of being citizens of Rome granted to so many nations, which made the Roman people at last become a sort of many headed monster; in the corruption introduced by the luxury of Asia; in the proscriptions of Sylla, which debased the genius of the nation, and prepared it for slavery; in that necessity which the Romans found themselves in of having a master, while their liberty was become burthensome to them; in that necessity they were obliged to of

changing their maxims when they changed their government; in that series of monsters who reigned, almost without interruption, from Tiberius to Nerva, and from Commodus to Constantine; in a word, in the translation and division of the empire, which perished first in the west by the power of barbarians, and which, after having languished several ages in the east, under weak or cruel Emperors, insensibly died away, like those rivers which disap pear in the sands.

A very small volume was enough for M. de Montesquieu to explain and unfold so interesting and vast a picture. As the author did not insist upon the detail, and only seized on the most fruitful branches of his subject, he has been able to include in a very small space, a vast number of objects distinctly perceived, and rapidly presented, without fatiguing the reader. While he points out a great deal to us, he leaves us still more to reflect upon; and he might have entitled his book, A Roman History for the use of Statesmen and Philosophers.

Whatever reputation M. de Montes. quieu had acquired by this last work, and by those which had preceded it, he had only cleared the way for a far grander undertaking for that which ought to immortalize his name, and render it respectable to future ages. He had long ago formed the design and had meditated for twenty years upon the execution of it; or, to speak more properly, his whole life had been a perpetual meditation upon it. He had first made himself in some respect a stranger to his own country, bener to understand it at last: he had afterwards travelled over all Europe, and profoundly studied the different people who inhabit it. The famous island, which glories so much in her. laws, and which makes so bad a use

of them, had been to him in this long tour, what the isle of Crete had formerly been to Lycurgus,—a school where he had known well how to instruct himself, without approving every thing: in a word, he had, if we may so speak, examined and judged those celebrated nations and men who only exist at present in the annals of the world. It was thus that he attained by degrees to the noblest title which a wise inan can deserve that of legislator of nations.

If he was animated by the importance of his subject, he was at the same time terrified by its extensive ness; he abandoned it, and returned to it again at several intervals. He felt more than once, as he himself owns, his paternal hands fail him. At last, encouraged by his friends; I he collected all his strength, and published the Spirit of Laws.

Scarce had the Spirit of Laws appeared, but it was eagerly sought after on account of the reputation of its author: but though M. de Montesquieu had wrote for the good of the people, he ought not to have had the vulgar for his judge. The depth of his subject was a necessary consequence of its importance. How ever, the strokes which were scat tered up and down the work, and which would have been displaced if they had not arisen naturally from the subject, made too many people believe that it was wrote for them. People sought for an agreeable book, and they only found an useful one; the whole scheme and particular details of which they could not com prehend without some attention. The Spirit of Laws was treated with a deal of light wit; even the title of it was made a subject of pleasantry; in a word, one of the finest literary monuments which our nation ever produced, was at first re

garded by it with much indifference. It was requisite that the true judges should have time to read it: they very soon corrected the errors of the multitude, always ready to change its opinion. That part of the public which teaches, dictated to that which listens to hear how it ought to think and speak; and the suffrages of men of abilities, joined to the echoes which repeated them, formed only one yoice over all Euгоре.

It was then that the open and secret enemies of letters and philosophy (for there are of both kinds) united that multitude of pamphlets which their darts against this work. Hence were aimed against him from all parts, and which we shall not draw out from that oblivion in which they have sunk. If those authors had not taken proper measures to be unknown to posterity, it might be believed that the Spirit of Laws was wrote amidst a nation of barbarians.

M. de Montesquieu easily despised the dark criticisms of those weak authors, who, whether out of a jealousy which they had no title to have, or to satisfy the public ill-nature, which loves satire and contempt, outrageously attack what they cannot attain to; and more odious on account of the ill which they want to do, than formidable for that which they actually do, do not succeed even in this kind of writing, the facility of which, as well as its object, rendered equally mean.. He placed works of this kind on the same level with those weekly newspapers of Europe, the encomiums of which have no authority, and their darts no effect; which indolent readers run over without giving credit to, and in which sovereigns are insulted without knowing it, or with out deigning to revenge it. But he was not equally indifferent about those principles of irreligion which

they accused him of having propagated in the Spirit of Laws. By despising such reproaches, he would bave believed that be deserved them; and the importance of the object, made him shut his eyes at the real meanness of his adversaries. Those men, who really want zeal as much as they are eager to make it appear that they have it, afraid of that light which letters diffuse, not to the prejudice of religion, but to their own disadvantage, took different ways of attacking him; some by a stratagem which was as peurile as pusillanimous, had wrote to himself; others, after having attacked him under the mask of anonymous writers, had afterwards fallen by the ears among themselves. M. de Montesquieu, though he was very jealous of confounding them with each other, did not think it proper to lose time, which was precious, in combating them one after another; he contented himself with making an example of him who had most signalized himself by his extravagance. It was the author of an anonymous and periodical paper, who imagined that he had a title to succeed Pascal, because he has sucCLeded to his opinions; a panegyrist

of works which no body reads, and an apologist of miracles which the secular power put an end to, whenever it wanted to do it; who call the little interest which people of letters take in his quarrels, impious and scandalous; and bath by an address worthy of him, alienated from himself that part of the nation whose affections he ought chiefly to have endeavoured to keep. The strokes of this formidable champion were worthy of those views which inspir ed him; he accused M. de Montesquieu of spinosism and deisin (two imputations which are incompatible); of having followed the system of Pope (of which there is not a word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of grace. In a word, he pretended that the Spirit of Laws was a production of the constitution Unigenitus; an idea which we may perhaps be suspected of fathering on the critic out of derision. Those who have known M. de Montesquieu, and who understand work, and that of Clement XI., may judge by this accusation of the rest. (To be concluded in our next.)

his

SEE ALL THINGS FOR MY USE."

SUPERSTITION has often arisen from an overweening idea of our own self-importance, as if all the movements of nature, ordinary, and extraordinary, had some reference to our puny concerns. It is related of Henry IV. of France, who though possessing in many respects a strong inind, was not free from a debasing superstition, that a comet which appeared in 1607, gave him much a

larm, and induced him to take precautions for the health of his chidien, because the astrologers gave out that it threatened their lives. Henry IV. said to Matthieu, his historian, who relates it," that the comet had shed its influence on the daughter of the King of England; and that through God's mercy, the astrologers had been mistaken." What tolly! The revolutions of the heavenly bodies had no concern with